


cherish

by fiveyaaas



Series: when autumn comes [28]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Choking, Complicated Relationships, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Rough Sex, Uh...... five as a sub was a Lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:27:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27335671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: She turns to him with glowing eyes, and she’s not the person he once knew.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: when autumn comes [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941919
Comments: 2
Kudos: 57
Collections: Harcest Fall Festival: Fiveya Kinktober 2020





	cherish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pomarome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pomarome/gifts).



> Gifting this to pomarome, who was so kind for helping me with one of my fics and commenting just the sweetest things! I hope you appreciate this!!!

“Don’t test me, Vanya.”

She turns to him with glowing eyes, and she’s not the person he once knew.

Of course she isn't. He isn’t the same; he shouldn’t have expected her to never change either. Fuck, he doesn’t even look the same anymore, which did bring him a sense of glee upon first landing in the 1960s, much more content with his thirties than  _ pubescence.  _ Right in this moment, though, it fills him dread, knowing how close he had been to showing up in at least _ something  _ akin to the right body, knowing that there’s become another barrier between them. She’s never seen him like this before, and, even if she had all her memories, she wouldn’t have recognized him the moment he found her. 

She speaks, and he wonders when she  _ did _ change. 

He can’t leave her behind again, that is all he knows. He has a responsibility to her; she wouldn’t even  _ be  _ here if it were not for him. The thing is- a lot of what she is saying is  _ true,  _ and if it was the Vanya he had been with two weeks ago, if it was the Vanya who had patched him up, he wouldn’t be feeling anger right now. He would be feeling  _ remorse,  _ for nearly killing her. If it was that Vanya in front of him, he would accept whatever she had to say at that moment and would  _ want  _ her to be angry, to hurt him the same way he’d thought of hurting her. 

The thing is though, it’s  _ not  _ that Vanya. Well, it is. It’s just that she does not remember anything he had done to her. She had simply pieced together all of the information she had gotten about them and decided to put all of the blame on Five. Even though she would have been entirely justified to blame him for everything that had happened, she did not know everything that had happened. She’d just taken a few glances at him and decided that he was not important to her, even though they had once been best friends. She had known this woman a month and was trying to  _ choose  _ her over him. 

And he didn’t want to admit to himself why that particular piece of information was upsetting because he didn’t have  _ time  _ to deal with it, especially because when they were home in 2019, it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. There was absolutely no way that woman was going home with them, it made absolutely no sense and it would disrupt the timeline and she didn’t belong in 2019 with Vanya (no matter what Vanya tried to insist.)

It wouldn’t be safe for her to go along with them, and he had to prioritize his family’s safety over their  _ feelings.  _ Had to prioritize the world’s safety over her month-long romance, certainly. 

She had known her for a  _ month,  _ and she was  _ prioritizing  _ her over her family who she had known all of her  _ life.  _

He didn’t know what he was yelling in her face, didn’t know what she was yelling at him. It was almost instinctual, the way they were arguing. It wasn’t the first time they had ever fought, obviously. Just because they had been closer to one another than they were to anyone else did not mean that they didn’t argue. She had been the only one he regularly apologized to after he’d snapped at someone, but, still, she had not been saved from his temperament because of what he had once-

Her hands closed around his throat, eyes seeming to glow even brighter. 

He reached up, closing his hand around her grip, trying to pull her off of him. She cocked her hand to the side, a cruel grin tugging at her ashen cheeks. Her nails started digging into his neck, and he didn’t rip her hand off of him. 

Instead, he just stared at her, waiting to see what she intended next. 

She clearly doesn’t know how to go forward either, expecting him to fight back, but he didn’t know if he could handle hurting her (though he was well-aware that she had no qualms hurting him.)

He feels his eyebrows furrow, feels his mouth open into a gape. She blinks and her eyes are brown a second, but she blinks again and they’re blue.

“I’m  _ not  _ leaving her behind.”

Despite the fact that Vanya could easily strangle him to death right now (or, Hell, he was a freak, maybe  _ because  _ of that), Five feels a smirk form across his features, chapped lips cracking at the movement. He wants to laugh in her face, wants her to tighten her grip until his vision goes spotty and then  _ keep going.  _ He wants her to bite his lips until she draws out more blood, wants her to pull his hair, and wants her to scream in his face. He wants her to make him feel something that isn’t the dread of realizing that he’s too late in her ever wanting him the way that he desperately wants her. 

Her grip tightens, and it feels like salvation. 

He wonders if he had always thought of her eyes as  _ warm  _ because of their hue. The glowing, pale color held nothing that he would classify as  _ warm.  _ Still, they’re radiant;  _ she’s  _ radiant. Even though she is essentially threatening his life, clouds have not formed above them, no cars have toppled on their sides. Powerlines had been knocked down much further from their city in the apocalypse; she had  _ control  _ over herself. It’s absolutely breathtaking. 

And then he considers  _ why  _ she might have this control, and he finds absolutely no reason. Sure, she has amnesia, but there is no possibly sensical reason why she wouldn’t still hold the  _ feelings  _ that had made her lose control in the first place. Emotions didn’t just go away when memories did. Simply lacking her memories would not have caused  _ this.  _ Especially considering she’d experience another influx of emotions in the withdrawal she’d have undoubtedly gone through. 

It is only at this thought that he bothers fighting back at all. If she had this control all along, why did she let him  _ suffer  _ as she had?

It is because he is a broken, traumatized thing himself that he can barely wrap his head around the fact that she destroyed the earth the first time without knowing if he was even  _ alive.  _ He wants to be angry, wants to let the thirteen year old boy who’d lost everything in three spatial jumps to at least understand  _ why.  _

Five doesn’t fight back wiht anything other than his words though. 

Unsettlingly, he knew words would hurt her much more, anyways.

“Did you mean to end the world?” he wheezed out. Technically, if he didn’t want to be in this position, he could likely blink away. He doesn’t announce that, doesn’t announce why he wants to be at her mercy. 

“What?”

Her eyes flicker to brown again, and he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want her to look like  _ his  _ Vanya because the second she looks like the person that he had thought of everyday for forty years in a wasteland, down to the perplexingly anachronistic clothing, and the second that she starts talking like whatever parasite had overtaken her body, he knows that he will very lose his goddamn mind. 

In her righteous anger, he can pretend it’s still  _ her,  _ that the only reason she felt so unfamiliar was because he’d never experienced her anger without it being subdued under the haze of meds. He has tried to think back to the time when she was very young. Before Reginald had fed them that bullshit about her getting  _ sick.  _ Was she this way then?

Had he ever really known her at all?

No. Fuck that. He  _ knew  _ Vanya, knew her better than he knew himself. He’d lived in a world she’d destroyed, saw the remnants of a world after her pain grew too much. 

She’d given him an entirely desecrated planet to show her hurt just as much as she’d given him an entire fucking book about it. 

“You have control over your powers, Vanya. How have you not caused another apocalypse?”

She looks startled for a few seconds before her eyes harden, and she snaps, “Probably because I’ve been surrounded by people I actually  _ enjoy.” _

He tries to stifle down his somewhat manic laughter, but he’s unsucessful in that endeavor. The blood drawn from his split lip splatters acros her face as he cackles at the absolute  _ absurdity  _ of what she’s saying. “Nice try,  _ sweetheart.” _ Perhaps he just had a serious death wish, calling her that with so much condescension. He knows that her loosening her grip unsettles him in a way that’s likely indicative of his current mental state, and that he wants her to truly  _ strangle  _ him, regardless. That he would be shitty as possible if it meant that she’d just fucking  _ kill  _ him already and end his decades-long torment, and it’s why he’s being such an ass now. “But  _ love  _ doesn’t cure the problems you had. You were hurt and traumatized. When you were draining my life from my body, I’m not even sure you recognized who I  _ was,  _ so I doubt you were even fully sane in that moment. And, regardless, you haven’t even mentioned what your withrawals looked like. We’re not in a fucking Disney movie, Vanya. Love doesn’t heal what you experienced.”

“Pretty sure that Father likes listening to the sound of his own voice less than you do yours,” Vanya spits, blinking in confusion as she does, like she’s gotten a flash of a memory. Five would have been ecstatic, would have dropped everything because he might be close to having her  _ back,  _ but his breathing is ragged, not at all from the pressure of her hand. It’s not even tightened on his neck, it feels more like her touch is tender than it is rough. And he’s too fucking pissed to want that. He has to hold onto this anger, though, because he’s not sure what would be left if he didn’t have the anger. He doens’t think he wants to feel hollow ever again. 

She sounds smaller when she adds, “I don’t even remember causing the end of the world.”

And the hardest part, he imagines, is that he knows she’s being completely, entirely honest. That, even though none of the way she was acting could ever add up, no matter how he stacked it, she simply doesn’t  _ remember  _ him at all. 

His body feels unlike his own as he staggers back. Five is logical enough to know that her biology isn’t going to change because of him, that for whatever reason she has this memory loss, it’s not going to change with him either. He’s not an idiot. He knows that she’s not going to experience all of her memories coming back magically, that she’s not faking how she’s acting. And maybe she  _ is  _ still angry. Maybe that world-ending anger is standing in front of him, that she’d potentially been hurt enough that her powers had been hindered somewhat. Maybe she has no memory of  _ why  _ she is this angry at him, but she is experiencing the anger that undoubtedly came from the betrayal of her best friend trying to kill her. Maybe that’s why it had been she’d chosen to direct all of it at him. 

_ ‘I’m angry at myself too,’  _ he wanted to say. ‘ _ I should have never let it happen this way. I should have stayed in your apartment that night and not let my own arrogance ruin  _ us  _ again. I should have, but I didn’t.’ _

He doesn’t say that, though, because his words would mean nothing to her. 

Her voice is as small as the girl that hid behind the stairwell, drawing the branding Reginald had forced upon his arm onto her own, hiding the frustrated tears she’d uttered as he caught her. “I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling. I don’t know  _ why  _ I’m feeling it.”

It occurs to him how little of time they have before they have to leave.

He can wait. It’s her. It’s  _ Vanya.  _

He can wait. 

“Did you leave me once?” Vanya asks him. “Be honest.”

“Why do you ask?” he deflects. 

“Because when I see you, I’m always afraid you’re going to leave again.”

His stomach sinks, and he closes his eyes, knowing that, at the very least, he was going to have to be honest about this. “Yes,” he croaks. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Why  _ what?”  _

“Why did you leave me?” 

“I didn’t mean t-“

“Am I not the kind of person people stick around for?”

His eyes open up without any of his control, and he imagines he must sound completely unhinged as he insists, eyes bulging, “Vanya, of  _ course  _ I’d have stuck around for you. I had no idea what was going to happen when I left, and it wasn’t  _ you  _ that caused me to leave in the first place. It was a  _ mistake,  _ albeit one that may have caused…” He doesn’t finish what he was intending to say, unsure of what he should say in front of her. 

“Would it cause the end of the world if she went with us?”

“I have no idea,” Five admits because there are too many variables at play, and he doesn’t think lying to her would motivate her to give Sissy up. Manipulating Vanya in that manner is just not something he thinks he can fathom doing, especially when she is putting her trust in him with this. He can’t betray that trust, but he also has to be perfectly clear here. “I know that she would likely not accept it if you told her that you were taking her to the future, that she would resent you for the rest of your lives if you took her away from everything she had ever known. I know that she’d be adding another variable and could drastically impact the timeline. Even the most minor thing could cause doomsday to happen in 1987 and for us to land in the aftermath in 2019. I know that, even if she was not a risk at all, I would still not let you bring her along.”

“Are you saying you would leave me behind?”

“No, of course not,” he grimaces at the concept of that. “But I would drag you kicking and screaming to that briefcase if I had to. I’m not taking her along.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s not meant to exist in 2019, Vanya.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

He sighs, pained. “Yes,” he confirms. “There is.”

She narrows her eyes. “And you don’t think you lost whatever right you think you have? When you left me behind?”

“I don’t particularly care,” Five shrugs. “If you go back in 2019 and despise me, at least you’ll be alive to do so. At least the world will be around for you to do so. Those are the priorities. Everything else is inconsequential.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

“I think you do.”

She’s going to be the death of him. Not even in the fun way.

Her eyes flash with an idea, and he figures it out as soon as she’s had it.  _ “That _ is not going to work.”

Apparently, even with superhearing, she’s a terrible listener because she’s gripping his neck again, except this time she’s pulling him down to press her lips to his own. He pulls away, scowling, “i told you that’s not going to-“

She ignores him, and he feels an invisible force shove him against the hood of his car. Five frowns up at her for only a portion of a second because then she’s in his face again, climbing up to straddle his lap. A small noise escapes his throat against his better judgement, and she shoves him against the hood of his car, grindng against him. They certainly do  _ not  _ have time for this, and he should probably tell her to stop. His time constraint is laughing in his ears, and he’s pretty certain he’s going to lose his mind if  _ he  _ is the reason his moronic family doesn’t get to 2019 on time. 

She bites his neck, and he figures he’ll just teleport them to the rendez-vous, anyways. Technically, as long as they were there within about a minute of his requisite time, they’d be fine. 

“I’m not doing this because I want you take Sissy with us,” Vanya growls, and with the mad quality to her voice, he find he’s not as mad as he initially was at the incongruities between the Vanya he’d grown up with and the Vanya above him. “But do not think for a second that I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re sending pretty mixed signals, I’ll be honest.”

She bites him again, and he groans.

There’s not much talking after that. He’s only 90% certain that she’s not exacting some sort of misguided revenge on him. If that’s the case, though, he’s quite fond of the torture she’s giving him. Her hands close around his throat again, eyes turning back to that pale as she commands him what to do. With the ease that he slides down his pants and her own, he imagines that she’s not really putting nearly enough pressure to kill. Pity, he’d have to teach her that later. 

He works her up, following her orders down to the last syllable, not daring to mess up whatever it is that she wants out of this. His hands slip in and out of her with ease, concerned at how quickly the mood had changed between them but not willing to argue about it. She lets out a tiny whimper, and he resists the urge to go faster, knowing that she hasn’t speecified it. 

Finally, she decides that she’s not going to make him suffer any longer, reaching down to grip him and guide him to her entrance. Her grip on his neck is still infuriatingly light, but he doesn’t mind when she rocks forward, making his breathing as haggard as it would if she was to really strangle him. 

She’s warm around him, fucking herself languidly above him, and he’s entirely certain that she’s going slow because it’ll piss him off more. Unfortunately for her, it’s not working. He can’t think past the feeling of her cunt enclosed around him to  _ be  _ mad. 

Her hands press to his chest, and she apparently realizes that her punishment has done nothing because then she’s riding him without any finesse at all, reaching between her thighs to chase her release as she does. He watches her movements in fascination, slipping his hands under her shirt to curl around her hips, guiding her when she starts going slack-jawed and closing her eyes. The feeling of her clenching around him and the sounds of her whimpering out that she was coming sets off his own climax, continuing to thrust shallowly within her to ride out the sensation. 

They watch each other for maybe ten seconds after, pull up their pants, and wordlessly go back to his car. When they approach the rendez-vous, they share a significant look that means  _ ‘we’ll talk about this later’  _ and go meet up with the others. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading!!


End file.
